


All The Things We Ever Wanted

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Developing Friendships, Family, Gen, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-09 15:53:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14719103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: This story takes place in between Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 and Infinity War. It explores the dynamic between Nebula and Gamora, and how their relationship develops after their reconciliation. All the characters in GotG will appear, but the story will focus on the tagged characters.





	1. Chapter 1

Nebula sat in the cockpit of her ravager ship. The cold seeped through the metal, everything powered down, as she considered the stars surrounding her, and the slightly brighter pinprick of light that was Peter Quill’s ship, Gamora’s ship. She was so much machine she always ran hot, the delicate motors imbedded in her nervous system always a soft humming noise in her ears.

They should have left by now. The brightly colored lights honoring whatever his face had been. What were they waiting for? 

A whispered voice ran through the circuits of her metallic parts, _For you_.

Nebula scoffed. That was idiotic. Maybe she and Gamora were not actively trying to kill each other anymore, but Gamora would not wait for her. It wasn’t Nebula’s name that Gamora had cried out during the fight with Quill’s planetary dad.

Her jaws clenched on each other, her robot hand clenching at her knee.

Maybe it meant something that Gamora and her new family wasn’t going to turn her over to rot in prison. No, Gamora had just let her go off on her own to kill Thanos, their father, which was surely a suicide mission.

Fear sparked through her, and Nebula tamped it down. Gamora could just have easily let her go because she believed Nebula to be her own person, capable of making her own choices. For so long they had both done as their father willed, taken from their homes as their parents were slaughtered. 

Perhaps that ship with all those squabbling idiots was her home, and maybe Gamora knew that Nebular would just see that as another cage.

Or maybe Gamora really didn’t care if Nebula went out in an electric fire going against their dad. Of course, Nebula had an edge where Gamora didn’t. Thanos wanted Gamora, his favorite daughter to return. Thanos probably did not know Nebula lived, nor did he care. She might as well be invisible to him, and that would be his undoing.

The bright star of Quill’s ship gleamed. There would be only one way to find out why they waited, or why Gamora had been content to embrace her and then let Nebula go off on what even she realized was a misguided death wish, even if It was fueled by righteous anger.

“Oh my god,” Nebula muttered as she powered up the engines, and turned the ship back toward Gamora.

Within a few minutes, she was in hailing distance. She got Drax unfortunately, who kept calling her “Nebular” and claiming they didn’t know anybody name “Nebular.”

“Ne-Bu-LA!” she screamed into her ship’s communication system.

This had been a mistake. She should turn around and go after Thanos. There was a scuffle in the background. Gamora snapped, _give me that_ , while Drax guffawed like he’d just played the world’s greatest joke. Then Gamora said, “Nebula?” 

“Are you going to let me dock or what?”

“You came back?”

Nebula rolled her eyes. “I could turn right back around.”

The ship creaked, its bay doors opening, and Nebular navigated the craft into it. The doors sealed, air pressure hissing in geysered steam. Not that she needed air to breathe. She could survive in space. Not for long, but long enough.

Still, she waited for her sensors to flash that it was safe to exit the craft. Gamora was hanging in the hall, and Nebula brushed past her, shoulder bumping shoulder. “Miss me?”

“Don’t you want to see where you’re sleeping?” Gamora said, “or was your plan to just lurk around like some thief in the night?”

“You’re the thieves,” Nebula said, but she hadn’t considered where she would stay if she returned. But it sounded like Gamora already had a place, so did that mean they had been waiting for her.

Gamora raised her thin silver eyebrows.

“Fine.” Nebula followed Gamora at a distance. The baby tree was sleeping in one of the window sills, while Mantis watched it intently. Quill and the fox were shouting at each other in the cockpit about the best way to escape a black hole, like that would actually ever matter in anything but the grandest of hypotheticals. Drax, now that he had had his little joke, slept in a chair with his feet propped up on the table. Mud dripped from the soles, and Nebula made a memory file to never eat anything off that table.

“Here you go,” Gamora said. She held a battered banged up door open. There was a bed, and a window staring out into the void of space. There were empty shelves, and plain walls. 

“What’s this?”

“It’s your room.” Gamora said patiently.

Nebula’s nostrils flared. “My very own room? I don’t have to share with—“ she jerked her head over to where Quill and the fox were still shouting at each other.

“It’s all yours.”

Nebula stepped into the room, neck craning as she took in the space. The door closed gently behind her, and Nebula was alone. She sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, her fingers tapping patterns into the cloth. 

What was she doing here?

The engines throttled so it seemed that they had finally decided to stop bickering and were on their way to—somewhere. She leaned back against the thin mattress, and let her eyes close. 

Nebula had trained herself to wake when her neural implants sensed the beginning of the nightmares. Her planet shone purple and blue in their sun, and the droning voice of another of her so-called brothers, sharing the good news that their lives would finally have purpose in their deaths.

Her eyes flipped open before Thanos appeared. “You’re a fighter,” he had told her, like it was important, like it meant something other than whatever he had planned for her. He took her hand, something so small and fragile he could crush it if he chose, and he did choose, eventually. 

The walls encroached upon her, and she jerked from the bed, and opened the door into the wider hallways of the ship, where there was more air to breathe. She could tell from the way the engines thrummed that the ship was on autopilot. It was a wonder that Drax’s snoring hadn’t been the thing to wake her up. Groot was still in the window. If she listened closely enough, and she didn’t because it was gross, she could hear Quill and Gamora together.

There was still dirt on the table from Drax’s boots. Nebular searched the cupboards for something to eat. There was stale dried bread, and she munched on it as she looked for something else, maybe some fruit that was actually ripe.

“You can’t sleep?”

Nebula whirled around. It was the one called Mantis. There was a slight glow to her antennae in the dim light. “It’s not your concern.”

“But I am concerned,” Mantis said. She sat at the table and looked at Nebula.

Nebula rolled her eyes. She sat opposite of Mantis. “You’re an empath?” 

Mantis nodded. “Would you like me to help you sleep?”

Nebula imagined Mantis’s hand against her forehead and she recoiled. “it won’t work on me.” 

“Why not?” 

“I have too much machinery in me,” Nebula said. “Thanos made me and Gamora fight, to make us better, he said. Every time I lost, he would replace a part of me with machinery.” The story came to her by rote. She thought of it constantly. “Gamora always won.”

“I don’t think that matters.” Her hands spread against the surface of the table. “I am still learning how to use my empathic abilities.” Her gaze lit up. “We could try it, and if I’m wrong you can laugh and point and say I told you so.”

“Fine,” Nebula said. They went back to her room, and Nebula stretched out on the bed. She wasn’t sure what to do with her hands. Put them on her chest, by her side, under her head? She settled with pressing them underneath her thighs.

“Don’t you want to go under the covers?”

“I don’t get cold. Now are you going to do it or not?”

Mantis pressed her palm against Nebula’s forehead. Her skin was warm and dry, but Nebula stiffened against her.

“Relax,” Mantis whispered, “and sleep.” 

Nebula’s consciousness submerged far deeper than any dream could touch.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Rocket was grumbling. “Why do I always have to fix everything? Rocket, my suit isn’t working, Rocket why doesn’t my gun make a bigger pew pew noise? Rocket, if I reroute energy into the engines so we can do a sick slingshot around that big shiny star, can you fix the artificial gravity? Well, of course I can, but I don’t see why I should. Any idiot knows that energy isn’t an infinite resource and if you take it for something then something else is gonna lose it and we’re all gonna float in freefall grasping for tools. Where the hell is my wrench?”

Nebular drifted. If that stupid fox said one more word—

“Don’t.” 

Nebula jerked her head towards Gamora. She floated a little ways behind Nebula. Starlight glowed through her skin, and she was haloed by her dark hair, so red at the tips. Nebula didn’t remember her hair, or if she had ever had hair at all. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to. Rocket isn’t a fox. You know he hates it when you call him that.”

Nebula rolled her eyes. “I hate it when he complains all the time. And don’t you say that’s what families do.”

Gamora just smiled at her, and leaned even farther backwards, back arched and arms spread outwards like she floated in water. They were two fixed points in space, floating around each other, orbiting each other, sometimes colliding, but more frequently breaking off into their own separate directions leaving nothing but wreckage behind them.

Nebula opened the flap on her arm, and pulled at some wires until she magnetized her metal parts. She shot upwards, and clanked against the ceiling. The floating made her nauseous, and she could see better up here anyway.

“And of course no one offers to help,” Rocket monologued. “We can save the galaxy but can’t even bother to offer a single finger to help.”

“Because you’d bite it off if we tried.” That was Peter.

Rocket lifted is head. Grease splattered his whiskers. “Lies! Groot, you’re gonna let him talk to me like that?”

“I am Groot.”

Mantis’ voice was faint. “You did that to me once. It was a joke that Drax made up. It was so funny.”

“C’mon Drax. That wasn’t a joke. It was barely a prank. And if you think I’m not gonna get you for that later--”

Nebula remembered that happening. It had been mean, and Drax had laughed, and Mantis had gone along with it because she had spent too much time alone with that asshole celestial and wanted a friend, or maybe something like family.

Gamora smiled faintly. Nebula could not recall Gamora smiling like that when they had been together. But why would they smile when all they knew how to do was survive while Thanos pitted them against each other physically—and emotionally, Nebula now realized. Yet if Thanos had not come to her home world, had not offered her his hand as if she had any other choice but to take it, then she would not have met Gamora. What kind of life would that have been? Who was she if not an instrument meant for assassin and death?

If Gamora was her sister, then that would make Rocket what—a little brother? God. But she had seen the metal bits shining through the fur of his back. He’d been made, like her. Nebula slowly began making her way downwards, a metallic rhythm as she crawled the walls of the ship towards Rocket’s location.

“No seriously, where the hell is my wrench?”

The wrench in question was floating several meters above Rocket’s head.  Nebula outstretched her arm, and the wrench shivered minutely before the magnetic pull put it snugly in her palm.

“You know, I’m never gonna get this fixed if I don’t get that wrench. I guess we all just wanna float forever looking like fools. But hey, who am I to say anything. Maybe we can turn it into a fashion statement. Gravity’s too cool for the Guardians of the Galaxy so now it’s too cool for everybody else.”

“Hey.”

Rocket jerked like she had genuinely startled him. She held the wrench towards him. “If I give you this, will you shut up?”

“Gladly,” he said. “See, only this rando who used to be our bounty and then somehow ended up on our side is the only one helping. I see how it is. You think you know who your friends are.”

“I thought we had a deal,” Nebula said as she held a wire in place for him.

“That’s for shooting me with my own gun and getting me locked up in a prison.”

Nebula heaved a sigh. “That was forever ago. Let it go.”

“Like you’re gonna let go of that grudge against your old man?”

Gamora glared at him, and took some small satisfaction that he looked away first. “Everybody get ready. Three, two—“ he flicked a switch so the lights flickered once—“one.”

The weight of her body, and her parts hung heavy on her frame as Nebula fell to the floor. Gamora toppled downwards, half into Nebula’s arms and half in a superhero pose that probably would have looked very cool if she had successfully landed.

“Oh, you do care,” Gamora said.

Nebula pushed Gamora so she stood steady on her feet. “Get over yourself. You fell on me.”

Gamora shot her a smile that basically said sure that’s what happened and sauntered off towards Peter.

Rocket wiped his hands on his pants. “You know, I could have fixed it on my own, but in the interests of trying something new, I’m going to thank you”

Nebula looked down at Rocket.

Rocket looked up at her.

“Wow, you’re really going to make me say it. Okay. Thank you for your help.”

Groot climbed onto Rocket’s shoulder. “I am Groot.”

“What are you talking about? That was too sincere, that was the most sincere expression of gratitude I’ve ever expressed.” He re-directed his attention back to Nebula. “Now if I’m not mistaken it’s your turn to say something.”

“Whatever,” Nebula said.

“It’s actually you’re welcome but hey who cares. Not me.”

“I am Groot." 

“I do not care!”

Nebula walked away, nearly running into Mantis. “Gamora said you helped fixed the gravity.”

“It was nothing.” Nothing compared to the other things she had done.

“I prefer to be on the ground,” Mantis said. “Floating makes me queasy. I had no direction. I guess I mean that literally and metaphorically.”

“Direction only comes from finding something, and working towards it.”

“What’s your something?” Mantis’ antennae turned towards Nebula. 

“My father. I am going to hunt him down and kill him, and make him feel every minute of pain he has made me feel.”

“I never knew my father. And Ego, who made me a flea on his back, is already dead.” Mantis’ shoulders sagged. 

“Just because my direction is revenge doesn’t mean yours has to.” 

“I like it here. Staying here is enough of a direction?”

“Sure,” Nebula said.

“But not for you?”

Gamora, wearing Peter’s headphones, passed them by. She stepped in rhythm with the music that Nebula could only hear because of the metal implants in her ear. Her hips slightly moved. It was something about being an all star, whatever that meant. 

“it’s okay. For now.”

Mantis took her hand. “I hope you stay with us a long time.” 

Nebula bit down her response—not likely. “Okay,” she said instead.

Mantis smiled at her.


End file.
